Paige B. is an active e-AA member. I am so proud to post her story here as published in the October issue of the Grapevine.

Ceased FightingShe connected to the power in the rooms, and with her sponsor’s help, she learned to take off the gloves

The Second Step was vital in my spiritual journey. I’ve been hearing a lot about it recently and am pleased to find I’m not as unique as I thought. I am an atheist and not on my way to belief. The Big Book says “God is everything or else He is nothing.” I chose the latter and got on with working the program.

I worked Step One prior to getting a sponsor and went back over it when I found one. Her first question was, “How do you feel about alcoholism as a disease?” I answered, “It could not be anything except a disease.” We moved on, reading every word of the Big Book and talking about recovery and actions. We talked about Step Two and about AA. She was satisfied that I had found a power greater than myself using Alcoholics Anonymous.

I knew almost at once that AA could restore me to sanity. Look at all of the examples of it! I mean, I did not believe in any kind of god and yet there you all were: happier than any group of people I had ever met, and obviously no longer slaves to alcohol. You must have the answer somewhere. I was told that if I wanted what you had, I needed to do what you did. Maybe not having an intervening HP made me listen more closely or gave me more willingness to act.

In Chapter Three are the words that gave me release from the obsession to drink: “We had to fully concede to our innermost selves that we were alcoholics.” I had a disease and AA was a solution that was helping countless alcoholics live a normal, sane life.

The Ninth Step Promises have come true for me: I began to know “a new freedom and a new happiness ... intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us.” I began to believe that my darkest day would be an asset to help another woman find a way to live comfortably in her own skin without alcohol.

Once a person online made a comment about how I was pretty high-minded to think I was doing it by myself. Being pretty new myself, I flew back a response I won’t repeat here. My sponsor flinched when I told her about my retaliation. She said I had to cease fighting everyone and everything, like it says in the Big Book. She also showed me that the book also says, “Love and tolerance of others is our code.” Be it a secret code or a code written as law, I knew I had to love.

My sponsor is a treasure. She is a school art teacher, which may explain her patience. But the truth is, I don’t think she ever set herself up with any expectation that I would change my thinking. When I got to Step Five, I asked her, “How do I admit to ‘god’?” She told me she would handle that part for me. Again, it was back to the business of the program. I came here to get sober and I got a lot more than I expected to get, and I did it without having to compromise my belief system. Our founders were truly inspired.